


By Now

by silentlyyscreamingg



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 19:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2703872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentlyyscreamingg/pseuds/silentlyyscreamingg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They should know better by now.</p>
<p>Or:  Harry and Louis break each other, but they're the only ones that can put the pieces back together.  If only they knew how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Now

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is so fucking depressing. I can't seem to remember how to write happy endings anymore.

“You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the  
middle of the night, but I had to see.”  
— Andrea Gibson

*

They should know better by now.

*

Harry remembers their beginning almost like a dream. How they crashed into each other in some sort of twisted natural disaster, lethal but beautiful. 

He used to think they were star-crossed lovers, soulmates. The way they seemed to survive off each other’s heartbeats, like two halves of one being. Now, he wonders if he had been right, but in all the wrong ways. Maybe they were soulmates. Unable to survive without each other, but together, they tore their own universe apart. 

“It was fate, yeah?” That’s what Harry used to say as they lay in bed at night, so much time before them. 

Louis never answered. He would just smile and kiss him softly. Maybe he already knew that sometimes fate can be unbearably cruel.

*

He’s getting drunk for the fifth night this week, and he doesn’t care. The burn of the alcohol is good. It lets him pretend that the tightness in the back of his throat isn’t from the deep anxiety running through his bones. 

Louis used to be the one to soothe him when he got like this, fidgety yet unmoving, an uneasy current running through his veins, ready to crawl out of his skin if only he could find a way to let it out. But Louis is with Eleanor. He has an image to maintain.

“It’s just for a little while,” they had said. “Until the rumours die down, yeah?”

Harry hadn’t realized that a little while meant three years at the time. He was too caught up in the high. The toomuchnotenough of it all. And even after that, they had survived on the thrill of the forbidden. The stolen glances. The secret touches. The endless nights when it still seemed like they had the world at their feet.

Now Harry longed for the time when Louis used to come home from his dates to spend hours curled up next to him while they watched movies and ordered take out. The nights when they whispered promises in the dark. But those nights never came anymore. Instead there was silence. Distance that seemed insurmountable. Darkness that was no longer comforting but suffocating. They didn’t speak. If they did, it just devolved into yelling.

“You’re never here anymore! It’s like you don’t even care!”

“I’m doing this for you, you fucking twat!”

“Yeah, well, with all the time you spend with her, maybe I should find someone to have on the side as well, huh?

If he played his cards right, he could get Louis to slam him against the wall and fuck him. Hard. Leaving finger-shaped bruises on his hips, thrusting until Harry whimpered that he was his, only his.

*

But it’s not always so bad. There are nights when they have time off that they tangle themselves together and lay for hours, just soft whispers and soothing hands against warm skin.

“Hey Haz?” Louis whispers against his skin. “We’ll be alright, yeah?”

And Harry doesn’t know how to answer anymore, but he still wants him more than life itself, so he kisses him with everything he has. 

“I love you, Lou” he’ll whisper after Louis’ breathing has evened out in sleep. He isn’t sure he can say it when Louis can hear him anymore. Isn’t sure he’s allowed.

*

They tours keep getting longer, the breaks shorter. Harry knows the rest of the boys can see them slowly drowning. Sometimes Louis will brush off his hand around his shoulder or deflect his kisses to land on his cheek rather than his lips. Sometimes Harry won’t even look at Louis.

Liam starts giving them concerned glances, silently asking if they want to talk about it. Louis pretends he doesn’t see. Harry just gives him a halfhearted shrug.

They are falling apart.

*

“You good, Haz?” Zayn asks quietly one night. 

Harry is drinking his way into oblivion once more. He’s lost track of the days again, isn’t sure he wants to remember anymore. He looks up at Zayn through glassy eyes, and he wants to ask for help. He can feel himself sinking, stranded in the middle of this ocean of anger and guilt and not enough, why can’t it be enough? He wants to shout for Zayn to help him, to save him, but Zayn can’t. Louis is the only one that can. 

But Zayn looks so worried at his silence that he manages to choke out, “It’s just been a long tour, mate” before stumbling away to an empty bed.

*

The thing is, they still know each other better than anyone. Which means they know exactly where to hit to make it hurt. 

The first time Harry catches Louis fucking someone else he wishes he were surprised. But he isn’t. He walked into the hotel room planning on pushing until Louis fucked him hard enough that he didn’t have to think anymore, didn’t have to feel anything besides LouisLouisLouis. But instead he walks in on Louis panting as some older guy thrusts into him. It knocks the air right out of his chest because this was his Lou. But maybe Louis didn’t belong to him anymore.

Harry had quickly retreated back to his own hotel room that night. He thought that he’d snuck away before being seen until Louis strolled onto the bus the next day and sat down next to him. “Should have stuck around last night, love. You had quite the view.” He smirks. Harry’s heart cracks a little bit more.

He deserved it though. He couldn’t say he didn’t revel in whatever pain he could cause Louis. He took every opportunity to fly off to LA these days. He made sure he went out and was photographed with a different person every night. He got some sort of sick pleasure in watching Louis stiffen every time he saw a new headline plastered across every gossip magazine. At least he still knew how to hurt him.

He can’t sleep with any of the though. He tries, but he never gets past a brief brushing of lips before he feels too dirty, has to push them away. Because he doesn’t want someone else’s hands on him. He wants Louis. And Louis knows it too. Maybe that’s why he lets Harry catch him getting fucked by every other guy on the planet. Maybe he’s mocking Harry, showing him that he could have any guy he wanted while Harry is at home waiting around for him because he knows Harry can’t stop loving him.

God, he wishes he could stop. 

*

Sometimes they still have their moments. Moments when all of a sudden they’re teenagers again, and they swear that they can take on the world. It’s always in the few quiet moments they get at home. Those are the moments Harry can look at Louis and see a glimpse of the 18 year old boy he had been when they met. So full of hope for the future. Innocent beyond repair. Harry has always wondered why people envy those who still have that innocence. After all, those are the people that the world has the most fun breaking. It certainly broke them.

But here in these quiet hours, holding Louis as though he’s the very key to Harry’s survival (which, really, he is), it’s so easy to believe that all they’ll ever need is each other. The soft kisses. The tangled limbs. The beating hearts. It should be all they need.

But it isn’t.

*

He wonders if it’s easier for Louis, or if he just hides it better. After all, Louis can still flash a dazzling smile and say something witty in a way that he just can’t anymore. Louis still laughs with the other boys, goes out at night, goes on with his life nothing is wrong. Like he’s happy.

And Harry is sure everyone is convinced he is. He’d believe it too if he didn’t know Louis better than he knew himself. He’s seen the way his eyes have dimmed. Though he can still fake a smile, his eyes aren’t that bright blue that Harry aches to see anymore. And he can prance around pretending everything is fine, but Harry has seen the way his shirts slip off his bony shoulders these days, the way his collarbones seem to have been chiseled out of his skin, like they might break if Harry squeezed too hard. He knows that he should do something.

But he doesn’t. He just watches as Louis’ bones get sharper and the circles under his eyes get darker. This isn’t something he knows how to fix anymore.

*

“Hey, Harry?” Niall’s twisting his hands together standing just inside the door of the tour bus. “You want to come out with us tonight?”

Harry stares at him. He almost feels bad looking at the hopeful expression on Niall’s face. He doesn’t deserve this. Harry knows that. He’s the baby of the group despite Harry being youngest. There’s just something about Niall that demands protecting. Maybe it’s the remnants of an innocence the rest of them lost so long ago or maybe it’s the wide child-like eyes that reveal every emotion that passes through his soul. 

Whatever it is, Harry hates him a little bit for it. Why doesn’t anyone think he needs to be taken care of anymore? He’s so goddamn tired of masquerading as the detached pop star who has everything he could ever want. He’s tired of pretending he knows what the fuck he’s even doing at all.

“Fuck off, Niall.”

It’s not Niall’s fault. But he doesn’t care.

*

Harry still subconsciously includes Louis in everything he does. He still makes two cups of tea before he goes to bed even though Louis barely comes home anymore and Harry practically lives in LA now anyway. He can’t stop though. Can’t stop going to brush a hand along the small of Louis’ back to guide him when they’re walking together. Can’t stop reaching for Louis’ hand to thread their fingers together while they sit in silence. He doesn’t let himself touch him though. Doesn’t know if he has the right to anymore.

And sometimes, in these moments, he daydreams about what it would be like to fall in love with someone else, someone who didn’t make him feel like he was dying from the inside out. But he couldn’t picture it because as much as Louis suffocates him, he was also the only one who could get him to breathe again.

There were still those tiny gestures that allowed his lungs to open once more. The way that Louis would tell some stupid joke that probably wasn’t even funny, but Harry wouldn’t be able to stop the laugh that bubbled up the back of his throat. And Louis would smile almost shyly and poke at his dimples until Harry was blushing and shuffling his feet like he was 16 all over again. Even after all these years, Louis was still the sun. 

But Harry still hasn’t learned how to keep himself from getting burned. 

*

Harry still remembers the day he first met Louis. The way his eyes had shined with unbridled excitement and confidence. He was sure of himself in a way that Harry had always wished he could be. He had envied Louis for that.

He never needed to though because Louis gave that confidence to him. He believed in him in a way no one ever had before. Had such a blind faith in him, that Harry had no choice but to believe too. He made Harry shine. Harry remembers a time when they burned so bright that they couldn’t see anything but each other.

No one told them that even the brightest stars burn out. 

*

It’s been four years. Four years since blue eyes met green. Four years since they whispered naïve promises that their love would conquer anything and everything. Harry wishes he could laugh at the absurdity of it all.

But he can’t. So he drinks himself blind almost every night, lets anyone who so much as breathes near him pretend that they’re fucking. Publicity is all anyone wants from him anymore anyway. Even so, he wishes they were. Wishes he could forget how Louis’ hands fit in his, the how his lips taste like the freedom he’s lost somewhere along the way. Because Louis prances around with Eleanor by day and lets every guy he meets fuck him every night. 

They are broken in ways they don’t understand anymore, maybe they never did. They can’t hold on like this, but they can’t let go. Like the sun and the moon forever chasing each other across the sky, so close yet too far away to reach each other. 

*

They really should know better by now.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this was a mess. I didn't really read it over or pay attention to proper sentence structure and grammar and all that. Oh well.


End file.
